Cookie Mayhem…

So I decided to make shortbread cookies. Flour, powdered sugar, salt, butter, and vanilla. Sounds easy enough.

Batch 1. I only found expired flour. I figured I’ll give it a try anyways. I suck at rolling dough out. And it came out nasty. Yeah, expired flour is no good. :|

Batch 2. I prepared the dough yesterday, and I baked them today. Not quite there yet with the prefect cookie. While I was trying to roll the dough flat, it kept on breaking up and then sticking to the silicone mat (which I floured). Someone online said that I need to use A LOT of flour when I’m rolling out dough, and that I have to make sure that it doesn’t get too warm otherwise it’ll get sticky. :\ I ended up patting them into roundish cookies with my hands instead. They taste better than the first batch of cookies. I’ll try again over the weekend. Batch 2 will go to my coworkers. The good cookies (hopefully in batch 3) will go to my friends.

Round 2 of Shortbread Cookies

Weekend Events! (Or non-events)

Saturday was the Treyarch Summer Party. I thought it was strange to be having a summer party when it was still spring… The party was held in Malibu on a private beach. It took forever to get there. There was traffic in Torrance because of the Armed Forces Day Parade so it took a while for me to get to my sister’s house. There was also traffic along PCH. I think it took almost 2 hours to get there. I think it was well worth it as the view from the location was awesome.

Paradise Cove in Malibu

There were also strange things that washed up upon the beach…

Strange Things From the Ocean

On Sunday, I finally prepared umeshu. It should be ready in about 6 months. The ume smelled very nice. The reason for the different colored ume is because my dad bought more. Good thing, I was short some plums.

Making Umeshu

Final Fantasy XI 6th Anniversary!

I got my new anniversary ring! Along with my new ring, I got updated stats.

Chat Frequency: 197487
Conversations With NPCs: 28277
Parties Joined: 1248
Alliances Joined: 212
Battles Fought: 18454
Number of Times KO’d: 512
Enemies Defeated: 15445
GM Calls Made: 3

Current play time is at 173 days, 10 hours, 43 minutes and 17 seconds.

My stats from last year can be found here.

Friends Again

It seems like Hoji and Sen are friends again. No more pulled fur as far as I can tell. I bought them a lot of toys to celebrate. ^^;

Mother’s Day kinda sucked. At least I managed to buy my mom a cake.

Finished reading The Kite Runner. It’s a very good book. I’m gonna watch the movie next.

Rabbit Fights

It’s been a very tough few days. Every morning I have to hand feed Sen her medication. Every night I have to hand feed Sen her medication again and make sure Hoji doesn’t beat the living daylights out of her. I’ve seen Hoji growl as he attacked her. He runs in quickly when he attacks. It’s rather sad having to watch Sen looking for comfort in her old home and friend, but instead Hoji ripping chunks of fur out from her. :(

Sen in the Animal Hospital

When I went to go feed my precious bunnies on Saturday morning, I found that Sen wasn’t next to Hoji. I felt panicky for a second because they’re usually sitting together. When I found her behind the pet carrier squished up against the wall she was oddly twitchy, her eyes moving back and forth in a pattern, and she couldn’t get up. All she could do was roll around struggling. Oh, crap. I rushed to my room to look for the number to my vet. The 2 veterinary hospitals that specialize in rabbits were booked and a 3rd had a busy signal, so I took her to the Animal Hospital on PCH. They do have a vet that specialize in rabbits, but she was at the 2nd animal hospital I called. >_<

When I got to the Animal Hospital, a staff member took Sen to the triage area to be treated while I filled out paperwork. A little while later, I was pulled into an exam room where the vet told me that it’s either a parasite or an ear infection, but she wasn’t sure until they ran tests on her. The estimate for everything turned out to be somewhere between $700 to $1000. Ouch. ;_; Anything for you, Sen! (Oyabaka.) After signing the paperwork, I got to see Sen once more before I left. The poor thing, she looked so scared.

Later that day was a birthday party for Rommel. He’s leaving for Iraq in about 2 weeks, and is going to be gone for 400 days. As standard for Filipino parties, there was a lot of food. Yum. :9 Even after all that food, some of us went to Lazy Dog for more food! I got a salad and soup. That place is pretty good. We were supposed to do something after dinner, but Rommel was tired so we all said our good-byes instead. I hope he stays safe in Iraq.

Spent most of today doing some typesetting for my dad. Had some miscommunication, so it took a while to get it done. I was planning on working on the drawing for a friend in FFXI, but family first. I also visited Sen before I went to the gym. She seemed to be doing better than before, but still had a slight twitch going.

Dead Lady Bugs

I bought two containers of lady bugs for my backyard at Whole Foods. One of the containers was filled with only dead lady bugs. Ugh, I paid $9.99 for a container of dead lady bugs. I couldn’t tell if they were living or dead since none of them were moving at the time I put them into my basket. Hopefully, my one living container of lady bugs will eat all the aphids away.

Cleaned by bunny cage.

Poke Ahi Tuna

Last night, I made poke tuna. I bought the poke mix and a pound of ahi tuna from Pacific Marukai. A pound of tuna is a lot. Luckily, I managed to catch my dad in time from making ramen. When my mom came home from work, I rushed downstairs to tell her that there was a poke tuna.

Poke Ahi Tuna Dinner

There was still some left over, so I ate it for breakfast. :9 Along with natto, rice, umeboshi, and green tea. I was gonna go without rice, but I looked at the tuna and the natto and I thought, this is wrong. Raw tuna and natto totally need rice. And rice needs umeboshi.

I also bought a new bicycle basket, sent off COD4 to my friend in Washington, bought more potting dirt, and I finally got to eat a beard papa cream puff yesterday.